I'm going with the filter as well. Had similar issues to what you guys are describing and didn't believe it was the fuel filter as it was only a couple of months old. I had recently started throwing diesel kleen in the tank between fill ups as my truck had sat for a year or two and figured it could use some cleaning. I pulled my filter and found both the outer and inner media almost pure black. Replaced it and cleaned up my battery terminals and the truck has been starting fine since.

 

exactly ^

not using an additive or having the truck sit for a while allows algae buildup along with todays $hitty fuel to get even $hittier. a sudden use of fuel treatment to get rid of that will clog fuel filters within a day or two. ill never forget the day i took the fuel filter out of the crane i was working on (manitowoc 999, had an 800hp cummins!) ran fuel treatment in it for the first time (crane was already 5 years old), filter plugged twice in one day, and two more times that week!. crap was pulled through the filter media like spaghetti.

 

any luck? updates?

its been a while!

 

its still doing it, just been plugging it in untill i get more time to work on it.

 

Finally got some time to work on my truck, still doing it if not getting worse. had to rebuild the fuel bowl this week, not sure whats causing this. its got new filter, and glow plug relay and glow plugs, and all test out good. wondering if a bad injector would cause this, but doesn't smoke when starting it unless its really cold out (30 or colder) will smoke white ish kinda blue for a few min and then go away. did notice if i hold the peddle about half way down when starting it, it doesn't do the womp womps. any other ideas before i have to go to ford and have it checked out?

 

Have you tested the glow plugs? How old is the oil?

 

all of the glow plugs test good, oil has about 3000 miles on last change

 

Mine does that exact startup cold. But mine only does it when Im running more transmission fluid than diesel for fuel. So with mine its definetely fuel related. Mine will do it even if its plugged in overnight but worse if not plugged in and all I have to do to stop it is press the accelerator once. I thinks its a fuel volume issue.

 

mine would crank like that. gpr was good. glow plugs are new. new batteries. same problem on a cold day start. changed the starter. that was the problem. was not spinning fast enough. got in the seat and turned it to start, on a 32 degree, didn't wait for the wts to go out. fired right up! i'm thinking the oil pressure wasn't getting up fast enough. solved the cold start issue. i don't have to plug it in anymore.

 

Bad injectors can absolutely cause this. The boss has an 02 with the same problem and when I finally got autoenginuity so I could test things myself instead of taking the word of the people he had been taking it to (that didn't know these diesels) 7 out of 8 injectors did not pass the buzz test. It will not start cold unless plugged in and then reluctantly, but runs OK after it warms up.